


The Merry Midnight Christmas Caper Afteraction Report

by oh_simone



Series: the secret real lives of real secret agents [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Christmas Tree, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy and Daniel foil a plot to steal the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Jack is just there to rubberneck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Merry Midnight Christmas Caper Afteraction Report

**Author's Note:**

> A little holiday fic to tide y'all over to season 2. Technically takes place after main events of [vinegar and cellophane](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3923485) and before the epilogue, but can be standalone. Happy holidays!

Interim Chief Jack Thompson of the SSR New York office threw himself out of the car as soon as Agent Lie pulled the parking brake, and strode—he certainly did not _run—_ up Fifth Avenue, nearly causing a minor accident as he crossed 49 Street. The icy wet sidewalk was not helpful in the least, but at least there weren’t many pedestrians, it being past midnight and the weather hovering roughly between freezing and good _Lord_ he should have pushed for that transfer to Florida. Other patrolmen and SSR agents had already set up the parameter around the block, and someone, at least, had the decency to salt the sidewalk so there wouldn’t be a broken ankle to deal with on top of everything else. As he rounded the corner though, Jack slowed himself abruptly, and took a deep breath to slow his panting. He adjusted his hat to a jaunty angle, checked his reflection in a shop window, and began heading down past the storefronts at a speed more suitable to a stroll in the park. Agent Leakey, who was in talks with the local patrolman raised his eyebrow at him as he went by, but Jack just smirked and made a great show of whistling "Deck the Halls."

Most of the lights of the shops and offices were dimmed, but Rockefeller Center remained a bright, festive beacon, silent and twinkling in midtown Manhattan. It was late in the month of December, garlands of white pine hung in wide, merry loops along the promenade, and strands of bright, white bulbs strung above and across the plaza. Jack had always secretly enjoyed the spectacle of a well-done holiday get up, and he had to admit the sight was something special, if eerily deserted except for officers and agents. He came up the side of the promenade and skirted the steps down to the ice rink, noting a subdued and slightly ashy character missing half his eyebrows being cuffed by McRory off to the side, and the scattering of broken glass from dropped glass ornaments littering the ice below. At last, he came to the splendid Rockefeller Christmas tree, a lofty Norway spruce, dwarfing everyone around it at 85 feet. According to Lie’s hasty report in the car ride down from Jack’s apartment, it had, through the power of mad science, nearly been spirited away by some villainous fiend, though Jack could hardly tell. The green boughs were still beautifully beribboned with ornaments, lights, and two very familiar SSR agents who were clinging to the trunk and the boughs very high up. One might have thought they had been placed up there from the start along with the silver ribbons and crystal-studded star, if not for the matching, sour expressions on their faces.

Jack Thompson leaned back on his heels, tilted his head up to see them better, and allowed the biggest shit-eating grin to spread across his face. “Ding-dong merrily on high,” he greeted, and dodged the glittering glass ornament that came hurtling at him resentfully. Above him, Peggy Carter primly smoothed out her skirt with one hand while Daniel Sousa, her erstwhile partner-in-crime clung to a pine bough with white knuckled hands and glared murder down at him.

“Jack,” Peggy said with asperity, “Please restrain yourself from anymore asinine attempts at humor and bring us a ladder if you will. It’s nippy.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack mused, cocking his head. “This is a new take on the ol’ Tannenbaum, and I think it might be the start of a new tradition.”

“Thompson, I can’t feel my fingers anymore,” Daniel growled. “When they drop me from this tree, I’m going to aim for you and drag you down to hell with me.”

“Now that was uncalled for, and not at all in the Christmas spirit,” Jack chastised. “And for the night at the office and triplicate paperwork I’m about to do on your behalf, I’d say you owe me this one very satisfying moment of schadenfreude that will be over all too soon.” He crossed his arms and continued savoring the sight. It was such a good one, he didn’t even mind the cold anymore.

“Merry Christmas, asshole, I hope you choke on your glee,” Daniel shouted furiously, while Peggy rolled her eyes. She could have easily climbed down without the aid of the fire ladder—Jack had seen her do worse up a sheer cliff in the Palisades without turning a hair. But Daniel’s cane was jammed into a tangle of wires at the foot of the tree and still crackling with electricity—even more worrying, there was an added twist in his trouser leg. Something must have happened to the ol’ peg leg, and so he was officially stuck up there, while Peggy, stubborn and forged of impeccable manners, refused to leave him alone, especially not when help was already on its way. So now, both idiots were shivering up in yonder tree and glaring down at Jack like it was somehow his fault.

“It’s not my fault you’re up there,” he felt compelled to remind them.

“Oh, bugger that, and bugger _you_ ,” Peggy responded peevishly, unable to keep the little shiver from rattling her teeth. That did concern Jack a little, and he waved down a passing patrolman for an update on the promised ladder. She continued, crankily, “You just had to assign us the case with the soppy bloke and his holiday inferiority complex.”

Jack held up his hands in protest. “I did nothing of the kind. I assigned you to investigate a possible attack on Rockefeller on Christmas Eve. Didn’t realize it would be of a different kind,” he shrugged.

Daniel sneezed violently then, and the tree top swayed alarmingly. A few more ornaments crashed and splintered on the plaza below, and even Peggy looked a little pale. Jack hastily flagged the fire men trooping up from Sixth Avenue with the requisite ladder, keeping one eye nervously pinned to the two treed agents. Once the firemen arrived, it was over in a matter of minutes. Peggy clicked briskly down the ladder herself, after which a fireman scaled back up to help Daniel down. Jack watched their slow progress intently, and didn’t breathe freely until everyone was safely down from the tree. Which, despite its midnight ordeal, didn’t look much worse for the wear. Another fireman had brought a thermos of hot coffee, and passed out full, steaming mugs to Peggy and Daniel, along with fleece blankets.

“How are they doing?” Jack asked the fireman administering basic first aid.

“Just fine, sir,” he said cheerfully. “A little cold, but nothing a good fireplace and hot toddy won't fix.”

“Thanks,” Jack said, relieved, and shook his hand. He looked to his two agents clutching their coffees reverently and was about to offer them a ride back, when all three of them were distracted by the sound of heels clicking down the promenade at a rapid pace. A young woman in a beautiful fur coat was practically flying towards them. Or, Jack amended, at McRory and the Christmas tree bandit. Behind her, a police man puffed along, vainly shouting at her to stop, but she ignored him blithely and descended on the little criminal with no regard for his handcuffs or his minder.

“Oh, Harold,” she cried, and the dweeby little man with no eyebrows jerked up from his slump.

“Ruthie!” he uttered. “What are you doing here?” In answer, she launched herself at him and threw her arms around his neck. He staggered and would have crumpled under her weight if McRory hadn’t scrambled to catch both of them. Jack, Peggy, and Daniel watched fascinated as the girl, a pretty, rosy-cheeked specimen straight from a Currier and Ives print rained kisses all over the suspect’s face, her enthusiasm no match for the black grime on his face.

“Harry, that police man told me what you were planning to do, were you truly going to? You were really going bring that tree to me?”

“I, well, that is,” the scientist stuttered dazedly. “Well, I mean, _yes_. Or, I tried.” He shoulders slumped again, this time more in confusion than defeat. “It would have worked, had the coupler hadn’t uncoupled, which shouldn’t have _happened_ , even if they did separate the magnetizer…” He trailed off, muttering to himself scientific gobbledygook, while Ruthie looked on, adoringly indulgent. McRory just looked bemused

“What,” Jack asked, “exactly happened here?”

“Well, there was no bomb threat,” Daniel said tiredly. “Just apparently, a poor boy who came up with the perfect, if completely ludicrous, Christmas present ever for his rich girlfriend. I mean, where would she even put that monstrosity?” He gestured at the tree, and they all turned to gawk appreciatively once more at its soaring height emblazoned with an embarrassment of glittering, fake icicles.

“I’m not entirely clear how he did it,” Peggy continued, “But it involved levitating the whole tree out of the plaza by reversing the magnetic polarities of the tree-stand or something unbelievable like that.”

“Not so much, since he was halfway there when you two pulled the plug,” Jack observed. “He doesn’t seem like a bad kid, might be good to ask him what exactly he tried to do, and…”

All three of them swiveled around simultaneously to stare at the suspect with much more interest.

“Do you think…?” Peggy began.

“Seriously?” Daniel said dubiously. “He almost ripped Rockefeller Center right out of midtown.”

Jack flapped his hand with a dismissive sneer. “Kid like that won’t last a day in prison, and he knows it. If we hit him with the ol’ bait and switch, he’ll be singing to our tune in no time.

“And you want to be the one to approach him?” Peggy asked lightly.

Jack rolled his neck with a crack and shot his sleeves. “Just watch me,” he said, and swaggered his way across the promenade to Harold the Mad Scientist and Ruthie his Enthusiastic Girlfriend.

* * *

Peggy and Daniel watched keenly as Jack loomed over the nervous suspect.

“There he goes, patent Thompson intimidation,” Daniel observed. “He’s doing that weird chin-jerking thing that he thinks is threatening. Say, is this really the tactic he wants to go with?”

“Well, no one can say he isn’t trying. Oh, he’s really laying it thick tonight,” Peggy agreed. “Look at his footwork.”

Jack’s growling rose and dipped in pitch several times, while Harold the scientist, his dark skin already ashy from his aborted tree-capering, paled even further to a mottled gray.

“That’s a little much,” Daniel said. “He’s losing him.”

Peggy made a noise of agreement, and sipped her coffee without blinking away from the scene. There was a certain trace of anticipatory glee in her voice as she said, “I keep reminding him to keep his guard up on his left, but he never listens, and- _oh_! There it is!”

They winced in tandem as Ruthie, fed up with Jack’s bullying of her darling, socked him hard in the solar plexus, and he went down hard. Peggy sucked her teeth while Daniel began laughing great, big, gulping guffaws of pure joy. Ruthie continued scolding Jack while Harold and McRory both tried to stop her.

“Come on, Daniel,” Peggy ordered after a delicious moment of—what was Jack's word for it? _Schadenfreude._ She tucked her grin neatly behind her mask of efficiency. “Let’s go recruit the poor boy, and maybe his gal, too, for the SSR before he suffers any more of Jack’s formidable bait-and-switch.”

“ _Best. Christmas._ _Ever_ ,” Daniel wheezed, and took a moment to wipe his tears before taking Peggy’s arm to hobble down the promenade together.


End file.
